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Archive for the ‘e-infrastructure’ Category

If MS-Exchange room mailbox does not auto-decline, but forwards conflicting requests

  1. This room should auto-decline conflicting requests, but forwards them:
  2. clip_image001
  3. If you log in as the room and look under Options / See more options / Settings / Resource:
  4. image
  5. You see that 433d has it wrong here:
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  7. 434 has it set correctly:
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Change onedrive to skydrive to embed your MS-Office online files in WordPress

  1. A while ago, Microsoft was successfully sued by Sky to change the name of SkyDrive. Recently MS did that, but it looks like somebody has not gotten the memo yet, again:
  2. Originally suggested embed code from SkyDrive: https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=0025C841818181C2&resid=25C841818181C2%21666&authkey=ANeXAUnGHDfEqTQ&em=2
  3. Fail on WordPress.com: image
  4. Change to: image
  5. Sort of works on WordPress.com (but width and hieght parameters are being ignored): image

Firefox Java AddOn settings on learning lab PCs

  1. FireFox should not be allowed to update automatically:
    1. teacherimage
    2. student: imageafter restart: image
      1. change in: image
      2. or: image
      3. or in prefs.js and user.js
    3. v. 26 disables Java by default which we need for online textbook components
    4. what dos v27 do which is now being automatically downloaded and installed
  2. Java within Firefox
    1. should not be allowed to update automatically image
      1. especially not for Java (7.51 breaks our online textbook components)
      2. but it has not updated to 7.51
      3. is this b/o the Deployment Toolkit also being deactivated?  Not sure: “By blocking the Java DT plug-in, the Java version detection mechanism is disabled. Therefore, when a user tries to launch a Java applet or application, that requires a specific Java version other than the active Java version on a user’s system, it will fail.image
        1. Manually checking for updates leads to this: image
        2. how to prevent automatic update of java?
    2. should not be set to “ask” every time (on frozen computers), plus: users miss the notification that asks them to enable it
      1. teacherimage
      2. student: image
      3. to just freeze java temporarily on a version known working , setting about:config/
        1. extensions.blocklist.enabled / false seems to radical

Call it “blog”, “CMS” or whatever, as long as your WordPress site visitor stats show that it helped people

I have been asked by a colleague about the “hits” in the upper right on my website. They are the number of visits I had(not counting myself, at least not when I am logged in – like many  “bloggers”, I am likely my own best audience! Smile).

My website could be called “a blog”, since it is based on WordPress, which started as a platform for blogging (but now – being so easy and flexible, and free (though not to host)- is behind every 5th website on the planet!).

WordPress  is also the platform for the faculty blogs in CLAS-pages: If you are member of CLAS and not represented up there, I hope you know that you can request getting a CLAS-page here.

“Blog stats” is a hard-coded label that I cannot change.  If I could, I’d prefer to call it “Content Management System stats” (that’s probably why they do not allow for changes Smile).

As opposed to just “web-logging” what is going on in my daily work life, I try to organize in this CMS the little things that I discover, hoping for reuse:

  1. by other people. That’s at least my justification for blathering, and I am sticking to it.  (1125 posts? Really? Plus plus 1? Oh well… Smile).
  2. by myself. For the CMS and blogging habit (summarizing into a somewhat presentable, comprehensible form, and tagging for findability) makes me often search for answers that I have forgotten on my blog rather than on my computer (and that is despite me loving OneNote).

In my WordPress site (hosted on wordpress.com), I can see site visitor statistics like in the picture below:  Includes search terms which led to clicks on one of my posts, countries of origin, outgoing links clicked etc.

I don’t do SEO or anything similar advanced on this website, nor do I use the statistics to cater to my audience (I am sure it is almost entirely transient). For me, it is just fun how I can glean  from these statistics that I could help people find answers to their language, learning (and too often: computer infrastructure) questions and some of my work can be reused.

image

Heck, I decided to “blog” this email response, since it might answer the questions of a few more of colleagues than the person that emailed me.

Exploring the active directory

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(leave database blank for default on the domain you are joined to)

ad-softerraad-softerra1

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softera ldap browser

Run mmsys.cpl if you get no audible output in a Blackboard IM call on your PC

  1. Problem: Blackboard IM (4.5.3), in its call window , gives you audio output volume meters image, but no actual audio output.
  2. Reason: Blackboard IM seems to have its on in-built idea which device to output audio to, even if you have no actual speakers plugged in to hear, and it is rather difficult to dissuade.
  3. Solution:
    1. Start / Run /”mmsys.cpl”, “OK”: Do the volume meters in there indicate that Blackboard IM outputs to another but your expected speaker (even if the other device is not the default)?
    2. imageimage
    3. Right-click on the other speaker device and Disable it.
    4. Also make sure to restart Blackboard IM. The built-in startup / dial tones will tell you immediately whether audio output works now

Internet Explorer add-ons to disable

  1. Problem: we need Realplayer for some legacy media, but Realdownloader is an  unwanted feature.
    1. “download this video” tooltip distracts
    2. slows down internet explorer startupaddins-disable real
  2. Workaround
    1. Sprocket/Manage Add-ons / Disable for Realnetworks looks like a good idea – may have to be done for all browser
    2. appwiz.cpl indicates a separate uninstall does not seem possibleappwiz-realnetworks
    3. it may be possible to configure  realdownloader separately (possibly using msconfig or registry) start-realnetworks):

How to test Voice boards (Blackboard Collaborate, formerly Wimba voice) for Vista Higher Learning (Supersite3) Textbooks

2014/02/04 1 comment
  1. First I create a voice board,
    1. image
    2. image
    3. image
    4. and add an audio contribution so that students can respond:
    5. image
    6. Fail:
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    8. image
    9. image
    10. More fail
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    12. image
    13. The help offered is of no use: “If the Applet displayed the message “Audio Unavailable”, click here. “  This is neither the error message, nor does the help address Java (but rather audio hardware config) issues
    14. But if you refresh (F5 suffices) the window with the Setup Wizard, it starts working?
    15. image
    16. Even the audio recorder:
    17. image
    18. And the voice board (after F5):
    19. image
    20. image
    21. image
  2. What Java version is this under ?
    1. imagereally? have I restarted after uninstall of 7.54?
    2. The running process here is now Java 6.
    3. image
    4. Still need to test on Java 7.45.
  3. Now a user needs to test from the student view